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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Maurice Winn who wrote (237066)	7/19/2007 7:36:22 AM
From: carranza2	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

But there is still vicious competition which drives the whole menagerie and charity doesn't have much place I think I used the wrong word. It's not charity we should consider as an evolutionary imperative but altruism. Charity is merely a subset of altruism. I think altruism captures the notion I was trying to suggest a lot better. It will encompass the otherwise unexplainable acts of bravery on the part of soldiers, e.g., the young man who will throw himself upon a grenade to save his mates. One can argue that such an act is logically irrational as it will almost certainly kill him. However, if he allows the grenade to explode as intended, his own chances of survival are increased, though badly injured and perhaps no longer fit for evolutionary competition. Could there be an invisible evolutionary hand at work here? One which calculates that the loss of one life is better from an evolutionary perspective than the maiming or death of several soldiers in the prime of life? We are much more altruistic towards those who are genetically linked to us, however slight the link may be, than towards those who are not. Obviously, we will do much more for our children than we will do for strangers. The closer the relation, the higher the altruism, e.g., we implement all kinds of nanny programs for our own but generally are unimpressed by ethnic cleansing in Rwanda, ex post facto Clintonian hypocrisy notwithstanding. This insight, if it is an insight as I'm sure some biologist has thought of this, may explain our altruism. Ultimately, nothing we do is purely altruistic. There is always a self-interested aspect to even the most saintly actions. I think evolution and the operations of markets are the twin invisible hands which guide our lives to an extent most of us scarcely comprehend.